BABY DOLL

posted on November 13th, 2011 at 4:27 PM by Steven Stanley

NOT RECOMMENDED

Joel Daavid’s production of Tennessee Williams’ Baby Doll starts off strikingly as elderly Aunt Rose Comfort enters her nephew’s ramshackle Mississippi cotton gin and frees the play’s ensemble/Greek chorus one by one from the clothesline where they have been hanging for the last twenty minutes as the audience has been entering the Lillian Theatre and taking their seats.

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posted in Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, Not Recommended

THE GOD OF ISAAC

posted on November 11th, 2011 at 2:42 PM by Steven Stanley


The neo-Nazi National Socialist Party Of America’s planned march through the heavily Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois, sends Isaac Adams on a quest to discover what it means to be a Jew in James Sherman’s hilariously original comedy The God Of Isaac, now playing at West Los Angeles’s Pico Playhouse.
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posted in Comedy, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

THE LANGUAGE ARCHIVE

posted on November 10th, 2011 at 6:40 PM by Steven Stanley


“It’s estimated that every two weeks, a language dies. I don’t know about you, but this statistic moves me far more than any statistic on how many animals die or people die in a given time, in a given place. Because when we say a language dies, we are talking about a whole world, a whole way of life.”
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Los Angeles, WOW!

BLUES FOR AN ALABAMA SKY

posted on November 10th, 2011 at 12:47 PM by Steven Stanley


That thrilling period in African American history known as the Harlem Renaissance has only recently been cut short by the onset of the Great Depression when first we meet the fascinating characters created by Pearl Cleage in Blues For An Alabama Sky, the Atlanta-based playwright’s meaty period drama which Sheldon Epps has brought to the Pasadena Playhouse in a richly exciting production under his own inspired direction.
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posted in Drama, Pasadena, WOW!

SALLY SPECTRE THE MUSICAL

posted on November 9th, 2011 at 12:48 AM by Steven Stanley

RECOMMENDED
Sally Spectre, the heroine of David P. Johnson’s charming if wispy chamber musical of the same name, has lived her life (sorry, make that her death) with a hatchet in her head for the past fifty years, trapped inside the bedroom that was hers during her short time on earth. Though Johnson’s book is vague on just why she’s unable to flee from her room or what exactly will happen if and when she does make her escape, a bunch of terrific performances and some clever, tuneful songs make Sally Spectre The Musical an entertaining hour and fifteen minutes of gothic froth.
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posted in Musical, North Hollywood, Recommended

THE VIOLET HOUR

posted on November 7th, 2011 at 7:41 PM by Steven Stanley


The first time I saw Richard Greenberg’s The Violet Hour back in 2008, I wrote, “It’s quite possibly a play requiring a second viewing in order to be fully appreciated.” Having now seen it a second time at Santa Ana’s Theatre Out, I’d like to amend that statement. Even two viewings may not be quite enough to grasp the playwright’s intentions, particularly in the play’s densely written second act. Nevertheless, it remains a (as I wrote back then) “funny and thought-provoking evening of theater.”
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Orange County, WOW!

TWELFTH NIGHT

posted on November 6th, 2011 at 7:14 PM by Steven Stanley


Even if you think you’ve seen enough Twelfth Nights to last you a lifetime, leave it to A Noise Within to put a fresh new spin on Shakespeare’s classic tale of gender-switching and mistaken identity. As for those seeing their very first Twelfth Night, ANW’s Caribbean-set retelling proves as entertaining an introduction to it as any lover of the Bard could desire.
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posted in Comedy, Pasadena, WOW!

NEXT FALL

posted on November 5th, 2011 at 11:20 PM by Steven Stanley


Rarely has the romantic axiom that “Opposites attract” proven more true than for the couple at the heart of Geoffrey Nauffts’ Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award-nominated Next Fall, now getting a powerful, beautifully acted West Coast Premiere at the Geffen Playhouse.
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posted in Drama, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

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